BOLZANO. Bolzano, after a long journey that started from disinterest in an architecture deemed “fascist” up to the rediscovery carried out by Oswald Zoeggeler, has decided to protect its rationalist architecture. After the most identifying examples – from the monument to Victory to the palace of the Duce on horseback, although historicized with various annexes – now we arrive at place a specific restriction to protect the former INA and its extraordinary porticoed curve overlooking the Prati on Ponte Talvera. The provincial council decided this yesterday. With the approval of the councilor Philipp Achammer: «Properties like the former Ina building and the nearby buildings are places where we can experience the history of architecture, which is inevitably linked to the contemporary history of our Province. For this reason it is important to safeguard them for future generations, placing them under historical-artistic protection.” This is a customs clearance that takes on a precise value on a political level, but above all on that of collective perception: the city welcomes a previously divisive heritage into its common history. Therefore judging a parenthesis that lasted decades to be closed.
The protection – and here we enter into the most current affairs – affects a building that had been proposed by the owners (the Tosolini group) as a candidate to host the new Ötzi museum, in competition with Benki’s Virgolo and the former Enel, where also Villa Gasteiger, which is a structural part of it, was in turn placed under protection in 2022. Renzo Piano had worked on the museum conversion project of the former INA. Despite this, the proposal was not accepted. But what does this protection mean in terms of its possible reuse as a property? «The constraint does not prevent new design aspects – he explains Claudio Lucchin – instead it means a further tightening of invasive interventions, especially external ones”.
Lucchin is the architect who, before Piano, was commissioned by the owners to develop a design idea, which appeared as a “glassy and transparent addition” placed on top of the rationalist building. Which was not touched as a whole, but a sort of hyperbaric chamber appeared on the roof that connected the twentieth century to the contemporary. Here, says Lucchin, “something like this could still be valid, because it does not affect the preservation of the property”.
The law on protection
The former Ina has always been looked at with special attention by Oswald Zoeggeler, the South Tyrolean designer who was the first to enhance the entire Piacenza area of Bolzano precisely by virtue of its modernist content and only its “fascist” side. Zoeggeler says something else today about protection: «There is a national law that prevents invasive interventions on any public building that is at least 50 years old. Except that in Bolzano this rule has never been enforced. Today, finally, we can move independently.” In fact this happened. «The national law was invoked here – comments Lucchin himself – only for historic state-owned buildings. The Province has always acted on its own regarding all the rest of the assets.” Today the provincial superintendent Karin Dalla Torre herself shows the meaning of this valorization obtained based on objective data: «The rationalist facades are surprising and the materials of the exteriors and interiors are of great quality, and constitute a relevant documentation of the social customs of the twentieth century» . The same curve, one of the most immediate elements of the construction designed by Paolo Rossi de Paoli in 1937 as an almost “mirror” relationship with Corso Libertà – is defined by Karin Dalla Torre as “bold”. The same ensemble is seen as an “indispensable characteristic of the urban landscape”. What possible future then? Looking at what is happening to the former Enel and its Villa Gasteiger, equally protected and chosen as Ötzi’s headquarters, one can see how in via Dante the contemporary additions while respecting the building will be an integral part of the project, thus showing a possible opening on the reconversion level.
The former INPS
The push to protect rationalism dates back to 2022, when the provincial government decided to place a restriction on the former INPS building in Piazza Vittoria. «We are starting an overall project on rationalism»Karin Dalla Torre announced, commenting “with wonder” on the project to partially demolish the former INA to build the new Ötzi Museum, according to Renzo Piano’s proposal. «That building must be restricted»he said. Two years later, the guardianship arrived.